Bananas Are Being Driven To Extinction

Hughsey & Kate

Posted on January 01, 0001

When it comes to the world’s favourite fruit, history is repeating itself, with the most popular banana at serious risk from the Panama disease - a fungicide-resistant pathogen that’s crossed continents and breached quarantine efforts to spread across South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia.

According to a new study by researchers in the Netherlands, the across-ocean leap to South America is now inevitable, and that’s a huge problem. This is where 82 percent of the world’s Cavandish bananas - by far the world’s most popular banana variety - are grown, with Ecuador alone supplying over a third of the billion-dollar global export market.